


Tzadikim Nistarim

by CarrieAnneWaywardson



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (remembered) Torture, AU Season 11?, Canon-compliant to S11:08 (Just my Imagination), Eventual Castiel/Dean Winchester, Gen, Judah Initiative, Lurianic Kabbalah, M/M, Sam in Hell, The Darkness - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-05 01:13:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5355416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarrieAnneWaywardson/pseuds/CarrieAnneWaywardson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam must find a way to understand his visions, in order to beat the Darkness. He finds a series of scrolls in the Bunker Library, and makes a few orders online . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stuck In A Rut

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! this is my first fic. I never felt the urgent need to write any until this season (11), because the lore is misunderstanding both the Darkness and G-d, and the Winchesters just need a little help from an old acquaintance to figure out their path.
> 
> My Supernatural cosmology is an unholy mixture of show Canon, Lurianic Kabbalah, many half-assed Google searches, and strong-arming disparate sources into something hopefully semi-cohesive. Please do not take my version of the Angelic hierarchy, the meaning or life, and the entire history of Jewish thought as gospel (heh.)
> 
> And, of course, none of these characters belong to me. The WinchesterVerse belongs to Kripke, the CW, et al, and all the others belong to G-d.

CH 1: STUCK IN A RUT

Sam sighed into his pillowcase, bracing himself for the images sure to come roaring through his mind within moments. Discouraged by the enormity of the Darkness’ threat, he had turned to the comfort and hope of previous years, the sense of help and support he gained from prayer.

Not the matter-of-fact prayers Dean sent to Castiel, always careful to include some “Smokey and the Bandit”-style trucker slang to separate himself from the intimacy of the call. Not even the prayers he himself had sent to the trenchcoated angel, when he was most worried about Dean. Despite the absence of G-d, not only from his life, but even from the perception of the angels he had come to know, he still called to his Creator almost nightly, at least when they were in the bunker or separated for a night. Dean gave him hell whenever he caught his little brother praying.

Maybe it was the severity of Dean’s break from their father, coming so late in his life, that caused him to reject any figure too fatherly. He hadn’t trusted their grandfather Campbell for a moment, either. _Not that he was wrong about that_ , thought Sam, bitterly. But to any angel other than Cas, or to the absent G-d, Dean was adamantly resistant.  
He closed his eyes, and reached a long arm behind his back to switch off the bedside light. As he relaxed into his bed, the reddish flashes of light inside his eyelids illuminated the unseen vision – Sam’s face, straining in pain, eyelids wrenched open with metal hooks. Chains criss-crossing his naked skin, cutting his flesh as his entire weight hung against them in a void of flame and smoke and light so harsh it burned his never-closing eyes. The strobe effect prevented him from gleaning anything but memories of pain and despair and terror, as the roaring echoed around the Cage, rattling his bones, causing his body to be flung against one supporting chain, then another. Once dislocating his right shoulder as his body was pushed away from a bellow, the blinding pressure and tearing sensation never quite causing him to black out and escape. Then recoiling from a flash of white light which burned his entire left side, causing the chain to slice through his muscles, causing a hot stream of blood to cascade down his left side, trickling into the burns. And always the thundering noise, tossing him back and forth as the two angelic brothers relived their prehistoric argument through eternity. 

He had learned the subtle differences between them. They circled each other around him, but one was fiery, his light tinged with a golden-red glow and subtle waves which licked the edges of his vision. The fiery one’s shout was like a battering of drums and thunders, rolling turbulence interrupted by sharp cracks which shook Sam’s every bone, again and again. The other responded with a pure, almost cold white light which left a ghost of blue-hot film across Sam’s eyes as it retreated. His voice sounded like air rolling around metal, blasting out with a peal that pierced Sam’s ears and made him wince with its sharpness.

Sam felt the softness of his bed beneath him, even as the sensations tore through his brain, and willed himself to hold on a moment longer to the vision, to try to ride through the memory to find what G-d was trying to tell him. He twisted his hands into the sheets, wrenching his fingers into fists so tight he felt his digits fighting the muscles which connected them.

He couldn’t hold out for long, even against the memory of two archangels, venting their wrath on each other, and on him. His mind’s reflection of G-d’s two firstborn, the mightiest warriors of Heaven, tore him out of the vision with a scream that scratched his throat, as if the illusory chains and hooks and flames had escaped his mind through his mouth.

He held on to his flannel sheets, hearing a door slam open and the sound of his brother’s bare feet slapping against the bunker’s bare floor toward him. Another slam, and a cry of “Sammy!” reached his ears as the bed sank beside him, Dean’s hands grabbing him and flipping him over.

Sam swallowed, and managed to croak out an unsufficient “Sorry”, as Dean began interrogating him. He nodded and shook his head a few times, and pushed himself up on a forearm, coughing the dry lump out of his throat.

“Dean, I really am okay. It’s just the memories. The Cage. The lights. The noise. The pain. It takes me a second to get them out of my head.” He smiled weakly.

Dean barely heard his words, as he scanned his little brother’s arms and face for any injury, grabbing his wrist to feel his rapidly slowing pulse, hazel eyes peering into brown ones.

“Pupils okay,” he muttered, then snapped “Is this a nightmare, or some kind of hallucination? You never screamed before, but I know you’re trying to get back there. Mentally, I mean.”

“I just have to find what I’m supposed to in the visions. I can’t understand what that,” he shuddered slightly, even wrapped in the warmth of his sheets “has to do with the Darkness.”

“Sammy, _leave it _. You’re not going back there. Not your body, not your soul, not your mind going walkabout from meditation or drugs or ecstatic head-bang dancing. There’s another way to deal with her. We always find another way.” His voice softened from exasperation, to concern, to comfort.__

“You know we’ll find another way, Sam.”

Sam’s brow raised into the puppy-like position of concern, but he set his mouth into an uneven line which could be seen as a sad smile. It didn’t admit Dean was right, but it ended the conversation. 

Dean accepted the peace offering, at least for the moment, and chattered on about Cas’ hilarious commentary on some of the series he’d been binge-watching on Netflix. Sam responded mechanically, eventually nodding off, and barely heard Dean pad softly out of the room.

 _Funny how Cas just rambles on about TV shows now, almost like Dean_ , he mused sleepily. _Even his deep voice seems so familiar, now. Dean said he almost deafened him before he got a vessel. Breaking out windows and everything._

Sam’s eyelid snapped open in the dimness, and he swung his legs over and off his bed to switch back on his bedside lamp.

 _Were the caged archangels trying to tell him something?_ The hunter remembered the noise from when he was down there with them, but if these visions really were meant to guide him, what if it just needed to be translated? 

_I don’t need to get there,_ He realized, scrabbling in his bedside drawer for some paper and a pencil. _I just need to hear what they’re telling me._

He waited a while, glancing down the hall to see the glow under Dean’s door wink out, before wrapping himself in a robe and slipping silently down the winding halls to the archives.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

His search was long, but he had been through so much of the angel-lore that he already knew what to skip. Schmidt-Nielsen only mentioned physiology, the Scholastic philosophers got bogged down in choreography, and most of the other angelographers were interested in endless tables and hierarchies, counting wings, and describing ladders and chariots and wheels in breathless attempts to out-adjective each other. Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, mighty, upraised, lauded . . . the list went on and on.  
Instead, he pushed his way through piles of yet-unsorted lore to a small filing cabinet in the back of the “Celestial” section. He pulled the dusty metal handle, only to discover it breaking off in his hand, the drawer rushing out to follow it. It slammed against his shin, and he barely stifled a cry as he caught the drawer awkwardly, before it could hit the floor and wake Dean. He looked down, twisting his mouth into a grimace that would have to stand in for an expletive. The drawer had no dividers or folders, but was stacked with small, tightly rolled scrolls, brown with age, tied with identical scraps of faded red and white silk. A plume of dust rose to his face, and he barely avoided sneezing into the trove. He limped over to the large central table and carefully deposited the scrolls before carefully washing his hands and retrieving all the tools for safely unrolling and reading the ancient papers.

As he unrolled the first scroll and saw the tiny, even characters, he sighed and padded up to the library to retrieve an English-Hebrew dictionary and grammar, his laptop, and a can of an energy drink Dean kept in the minifridge. Sam glanced at the ingredient list and grimaced, but shrugged. Coffee scent would wake Dean, and this would take a while.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________--

A glance at his watch made him interrupt filling yet another page with garbled, faulty translation. The scrolls, as it turned out, were Aramaic, mostly, with plenty of quotes from older, Hebrew lore. Some were composed in alphabetic acrostics; some in plain prose, peppered with medical and astronomical references from Persian and Moorish sources; some in Psalm verse. One looked suspiciously like a limerick.

He carefully rewrapped each of the scrolls that didn’t fit his needs, and attached tiny notes under the silk bindings, reading _“Invocation against demon that haunts privies”, “Alternate blessing for brit milah of non-identical twins”, “Recipes for midwives in the countryside around Seville ca. 1370(?)”_. 

Two were kept out for future perusal. One was a ritual involving burying special bowls to ask for angelic intercession, and one a meditation regimen involving Torah study and a rigorous fasting-and-bathing schedule. Sam wasn’t sure about the first one – it wasn’t exactly intercession he needed, at least not from an angel, but he’d have a tough time hiding a sudden interest in Biblical ritual purity from Dean. 

He’d need at least a few hours of sleep before Dean woke up and wanted to start looking for a new job. He could try to slip back down to continue later in the day, but now his eyes were stinging and he could feel the caffeine, taurine, and G-d-knew-what-else-ine from that hideous drink wearing off. This job was going to take his full attention, especially because he didn’t want to ask for Cas’ help, fearing the angel would ask questions, or tell Dean.

 _And I'm keeping a secret from Dean again,_ he sighed. _But if he won't let me follow my gut, I'll have to do it without him_.

Just in case, we checked the garage and the internet before slipping back into his bed. And sure enough, there was a blowtorch in one and a small supplier of special Israeli clay in the other. His eyelids were drooping by the time he pressed “Checkout” and closed Google Translate, and he fell into the heavy, dreamless sleep of a man with a plan.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Glossary:  
_Brit Milah_ : Circumcision ceremony


	2. Seemed like a Good Idea at the Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam continues working on his plan, and something's up with Cas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Judaism is pretty picky about using the name of the Deity, even in writing, so I use "G-d" out of respect. Even though some characters (Dean, especially), will use it in vain, I will always spell it with the dash. I'll also try to put in a glossary of any Hebrew or Aramaic I end up using.
> 
> My Supernatural cosmology is an unholy mixture of show Canon, Lurianic Kabbalah, many half-assed Google searches, and strong-arming disparate sources into something hopefully semi-cohesive. Please do not take my version of the Angelic hierarchy, the meaning of life, and the entire history of Jewish thought as gospel (heh.)

Cas’ Netflix-watching had apparently come to a swift end with Metatron’s revelation that the Darkness was G-d’s sister, offered as some sacrifice to enable Creation.  
Now Cas was in the archives and library almost as much as Sam, poring over the earliest tracts on theology and cosmology the Men of Letters had, scoffing and raking his fingers through his hair by turns.

“What’s up now, Cas? Another flying turtle myth got you down?” Sam asked, trying to lighten the mood.

Castiel snapped the tome in front of him shut with a flick of one finger and turned his blue gaze to Sam. 

“Metatron’s assertion makes no sense.” He growled. “I mean, I wasn’t created until the world was already mostly done, I barely even caught the Ordovician meteor event. So I wasn’t _there_ , I can’t really know, but how can the Creator of all things, G-d who is One and his name One, how can he be one of two? This alleged sister . . .”  
Sam saw his disconcertion. Cas seemed almost _hurt_ by what Metatron had said. Sam tried to empathize, and that brought back some painful memories of John Winchester.

“It’s hard to face the idea that our fathers are people. . .” he began, and abruptly stopped when he saw the look on Cas’ usually stoic face.

“G-d is not **’people’** , Sam!” the angel’s low voice rose in volume, but dropped lower in pitch, causing the glassware on the table between them to rattle. “Even using the term “Father” to refer to him is incorrect. He did not sire me, but created me with a word. G-d cannot be split, or lessened but by his own action and will! And Metatron’s . . . _**Blasphemy**_ can’t be true, it **_can’t be!_** ”

Sam managed not to cover his ears, but was still shrinking back slightly from the outburst when he heard Dean yelling from the direction of the kitchen.

“What the **HELL** is going on in there? Cas, is that _you_? Sammy, what’s . . .”

Cas saw the look on Sam’s face, and glanced down at the hunter’s big hands, wrapped around the glasses. His eyes flicked back to the sound of doors slamming open through the bunker and he sighed, curling his fists into the pockets of his trenchcoat.

“I’m sorry, Sam.” He whispered, as he stood and turned to leave.

Dean entered the room as loudly as Cas seemed determined to leave it quietly. He glanced at Cas, then at Sam, the guilt in both their body languages palpable.

“Cas, what the hell? You haven’t yelled about blasphemy since the last time Crowley sent us a surprise present. Sam, what’d you say?” seeing no immediate threat, he leaned against the upper railing, looking down on them both sternly.

“Just a theological discussion, Dean.” Cas deflected. “I’m doing some research into Metatron’s assertion of Amara’s nature, and it’s logically unsound.”

“Nothing logically sound about younger sisters. Trust me, I know.” quipped Dean, winking at Sam.

Cas seemed nearly ready to open the discussion again, but instead forced his fists further into his tan pockets and stalked up the stairs. 

Sam could barely see Dean’s slight touch to Cas’ sleeve as he passed, and the look that passed between them. _He’s constantly monitoring him, just like he’s keeping an eye on me_ , Sam realized.

Dean descended the stairs two at a time and sprawled in the chair beside Sam, glancing at the texts spread around the table.

“What were you two researching that led to Cas yelling, man?” 

“Stuff about the Darkness. I was trying to make him feel better, but I kind of . . . compared his Dad to ours.”

Dean leaned back, stroking his stubbly chin in a parody of thoughtfulness.

“See, now _I_ want to hit you.” He grinned, then sobered. “I mean, say what you want about Dad, and we both have, but at least he was _there_ , mostly. And guided us, even if it wasn’t the best path for kids. Most of the angels never even saw G-d.” 

“Yeah, I know. I think this Amara thing is really bothering him, though.” 

Dean turned his eyes away, and shifted slightly in his seat.

“Yeah, he’s been touchy about that.” He trailed off into silence.

Sam remembered the last time they’d all discussed the now-teenaged Amara, just following her escape from the abandoned mental institution in New England Crowley had been holding her. He’d been on-and-off unconscious for much of that fight, thrown across the room with a gesture by Crowley and Amara in turns. He’d woken just in time to see Dean and the angel exchanging accusations, Cas admitting he’d let Metatron go and Dean claiming Amara had overpowered him and escaped.

But from what he’d seen, Amara didn’t threaten Dean at all. It seemed almost like she’d trusted him. Maybe she remembered her early infancy,( it had only been a few weeks before) but Dean was acting strange around her too. Like there was something about her he hadn’t told them.

Sam broke the silence, shifting the papers so Castiel’s were on top of his own.

“He hasn’t found anything of much use in proving Metatron wrong, but nothing that proves him right, either.”

“Yeah, the lore seems useless for stuff that far back.” Agreed Dean. 

“I don’t know if he’d want to talk to me, but could you . . . check on Cas?” asked Sam, trying to calm his hands, which were nervously fiddling with the texts, trying to assure himself by feel alone that none of his notes were visible.

Dean smirked. “You are such a girl. He’s fine.”

Sam shot him a glare, and his brother relented.

“Okay, fine. I’ll see what he’s up to. Just hope I don’t get smote. Or smited.”

“Smitten.” Sam pointedly corrected.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dean maintained his swagger up the stairs and hallway down one of the bunker’s many long hallways, but his mind was racing. _Why is Cas so twitchy? And how could he have let Metatron go?_

Dean was no stranger to ill-advised mercy that came back to bite him in the ass later. It was more of a Sam failing, but still, no one who makes life-or-death decisions on a weekly basis could completely avoid it. Especially when those decisions often involved family and the closest thing to friends he’d ever had, not to mention the dozens of innocents who were always clustered around whatever fucked-up situation was going down as if they were _moths_ , for G-d’s sake.

But Cas had that righteous certainty. Not to say that he hadn’t screwed up royally, on several occasions, but he didn’t seem to dither and second-guess himself. Even when he’d had to kill angels, his own brothers in arms, he’d done it, never holding back the silver blade to protect the brothers Winchester or humanity as a whole. 

Cas seemed less sure now, like the rug had been pulled out from under him, and there turned out to be no floor beneath. It was worrying to see the usually unflappable angel flapping.

Dean paused a moment, imagining Cas landing on water like a duck, wings going nuts, and that “oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck” leg action seeming to run backwards as he hit a pond. He composed himself before knocking on Cas’ door.

“Come in Dean.” 

The gravelly voice interrupted his first knock, and the door swung open.

Dean hadn’t been in here often, since Cas had got his grace back and was no longer practically dying. The pajamas he’d recuperated in were neatly folded on the dresser, and the blankets he’d been cocooned in were folded to exact right angles and stacked precisely on the foot of the bed. The room was a drill sergeant’s dream.

Except for the trenchcoat laying in a crumpled heap on the floor, and the blue tie being twisted in two pale hands, crushing the silk. Cas himself broke the parallel perfection of the room, laying awkwardly perpendicular to the bed, his shirtsleeves carelessly shoved up above his elbows. His dark hair was wild, too, and his blue eyes seemed tired.

Dean tried to think of something to say, some joke about why they couldn’t have nice things, but shut up instead and deposited himself one of the large leather club chairs the Men of Letters had apparently bought in bulk and distributed throughout the bunker. 

“What’s up, Cas? Never heard you call _me_ out for blaspheming, and I know you hate it when I say ‘G-d dammit’.”

The angel dropped the tie to the floor, and propped himself up on his elbows to look at the hunter.

“In the great scheme of things, your thoughtless invocations to a deity in whom you have no faith are of little importance. But if Metatron is right . . .”

Dean froze, unable to cope with the sound of the angel’s voice cracking on the word ‘right’. He knew Cas was something of a rebel in Heaven, always siding with humanity against orders from above, even managing to break through Naomi’s brainwashing. But he’d always seemed somehow okay with G-d, even though to Dean’s eyes there was nothing okay with a deadbeat deity leaving the universe in the hands of sociopathic angels and marauding demons. It seemed like that bedrock of faith was shaking, because of what Metatron had said. Somehow, the idea that G-d had sacrificed his sister shook Cas in a way nothing had before, though Apocalypses, Purgatory, multiple deaths all around . . .

“He’s not right. Like you said, he’s a blasphemer. And an asshole. I don’t know anything about what G-d was up to before we came around, but I don’t believe it, okay? And you shouldn’t. Don’t let that . . . Blas-hole get in your head.” Dean babbled, trying to stop Castiel, an Angel of the Lord, from doubting, to at least try to comfort him somehow.  
“No G-d worth having would betray family, Cas. And no father of yours would, either.”

“Blas-hole, Dean?” his head cocked to the side, a slightly quizzical and perhaps amused look ghosting over the sorrow for a moment.

Dean shrugged and grinned, hoping that maybe . . .

“But the problem isn’t what G-d may have done to the Darkness, it’s what the Darkness _is_. She . . . It was powerful enough to overcome you with ease, without hurting you at all, but still rammed your brother against walls and knocked him out.”

Dean looked away, not wanting to explain what had happened, and not sure himself. He’d stormed in, ready to kill the girl. Or ready to try, at least. But he’d stopped. Not because she’d stopped him, but because he somehow couldn’t. And then she’d bargained with Crowley for his safe passage out. 

“I don’t know what she is. Absolute destruction, I guess? The end of whatever came before G-d decided to try out this little experiment? But I think she’s slowly getting stronger, and I don’t know what we can do when she hits full throttle.”

Cas shook his head with a sigh. 

“The trouble with you humans, Dean, is that you look for the solution without knowing the question. We need to know if Metatron is right before we can hope to defeat her. Because if G-d has a sister, and I won’t get too theological here, then everything I know, down to particle physics, flight vectors, the conjunction of Enochian pluperfect verbs, and the hypothalamus that I reconstructed in your skull . . .is _wrong_.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The awkwardness between Sam and Cas had cleared the next morning, to Sam’s relief. He instead threw himself with renewed vigor into the oldest records the bunker had, and disappeared at random intervals, in a whoosh of wings, to retrieve rare texts from around the world to supplement his reading. Once Sam asked where he’d been, and when the angel had answered “Under a bomb shelter in Sderot, there are some books hidden there”, had asked each following trip. Sam was seriously considering putting Post-It arrows onto the map table in the war room, to mark all the ancient sites and high-security vaults Cas had visited. Sam wished he could have gone along on the jaunt to the Hermitage, but the angel confessed he had only been in their dust-free room, and only for a moment.

Over the next week, everything went back to as normal as it ever was, though both brothers were careful to not mention the Darkness, Metatron, or G-d unless Cas brought it up first. Cas, for his part, was making peace by arguing with Dean about whether Jon Snow was actually dead and bringing back some acai berries from Brazil for Sam’s smoothies.

Sam started going to bed earlier and earlier, with the excuse of “early morning running” and a few double entendres from Dean. So he had the pre-dawn hours to himself, mostly, and managed to finish the bowl, thanks to a one-credit ceramics class he’d taken at Stanford as an awkward attempt to get close to Jess. He carefully scored lines on the underside to ensure that it would break where it was supposed to, and spent days carefully inscribing the incantation in tiny Hebrew letters. It shouldn’t have taken long, but consulting an obscure Talmudic chart, he’d determined the proper days of the week and times of day that were auspicious for Michael, and planned accordingly. 

_The longer I read all this rabbinic stuff, the more there is. Really wish I could get Cas to help with the Hebrew and Aramaic, though.. Then again, I made him work behind Dean’s back with Rowena, and I won’t do it again._

The ritual bowl invocation was more powerful than the quick spells they’d learned to summon demons or spirits. Sam hoped against hope that it might be powerful enough to communicate through the walls of the cage itself, and that he could just ask Michael (he seemed the safer option)what he should be doing. 

Finally, just before sunrise on a Sunday, Sam bathed in one of the bunker’s giant bathtubs, then jumped into the freezing water of the Solomon River, going completely under three times and saying Hebrew blessings, hoping his pronunciation wasn’t too far off. He dried off as quickly as he could, teeth chattering in the December chill, dressed all in white, picked up the bowl, and climbed up the hill over the bunker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have a moment, I would love feedback - this is my first fic,and I have no clue what people (other than myself) like or find easy to read. Thanks, and Happy Hanukkah!
> 
> Glossary:  
>  _Sderot_ : a city in modern Israel  
>  _Talmudic_ : having to do with Talmud, the extended commentary on the Bible and codification of Jewish law, compiled in the 3rd-5th centuries, primarily.  
>  _Rabbinic_ : Having to do with or written by Rabbis


	3. Hammer and Tongs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a day late. The chapter started getting really long, and I wasn't sure whether to end it here or keep going, but the next logical stopping point is a ways out. I'm going to try to update every Thursday or Friday, to keep this thing going. Please let me know if you like it - this is my first fic, and I can feel the clunky.
> 
> Reminder - Kripke owns pretty much everybody.
> 
> This is officially AU as of "O Brother Where Art Thou", but is pretty much Canon-compliant up 'til then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A text from an old friend sends Dean to inspect the kitchen and Cas to visit a brother. Sam continues with his plan, but has trouble with the back of the throat.

**Chapter 3: HAMMER AND TONGS**

Dean turned, restless, on his memory foam mattress. When he’d started “nesting” in the bunker, he’d invested in creature comforts for the first time, and usually woke as well rested as he’d been in his sleepless life. He’d smirk at Sam’s aches and pains, crowing that the foam “remembers me!”, to which Sam would usually make a remark that at his age, Dean probably needed it.

But it was his own memory giving him trouble now, and preventing him from sleeping through the grey pre-dawn. Sam had seemed happy enough to stop whatever he had been thinking of doing, _and that didn’t bear thinking about_ , to help Cas try to figure out what the Darkness was. But he couldn’t let go of the image of near-seizure Sam’d had the week before. And Cas’ silent determination to reject Metatron’s assertion. Each of them seemed to be stiff-necking through their own dilemmas, and Dean felt the pressure to hold his little family together, trying somehow to pay them back for refusing to let him go. 

He tried not to think back too often to his time as a demon, and the aching violence that unwound through him, expanding out from the Mark of Cain, echoing through his blood vessels until it filled his eyes with blackness. He tried not to remember the anger, and the pain in Sam and Cas’ faces when they’d seen him at his worst, reveling in his darkness.

_Heh. Yeah. They thought that was the darkest, at least since Lucifer and the Apocalypse. That the Mark was worse than whatever fallout would come from breaking it._

But as soon as Dean had been freed, and felt his veins relax, the huge clouds had rolled in, and it had looked more like the End Times than the End Times had, huge and impersonal and so, so final.

And as horrible as it was, it had felt . . . _real_. He hadn’t believed his personal meeting with the Darkness herself just after, the strange, thrilling bliss he felt with her, as she said they would never hurt each other. That felt impossibly strange. Unreal. But he knew he hadn’t dreamed it, and his face-to-face with teenaged Amara seemed like proof, of sorts.

He flipped himself over from his usual sleeping position to stare at the bunker ceiling.

He found he agreed with the angel, in a way. The woman-form who had stood before him hadn’t felt connected to the giant billowing blackness that had overtaken the Impala moments before. Her closeness . . .

The buzzing of his phone was a welcome interruption, and he grasped it thankfully, turning the too-bright screen to his eyes. He thumbed through to a text message from an unfamiliar number, and knit his brows as he tried to translate it into something that made sense.

_Dean, it’s Aaron, from the JI. You have to stop Sam. Check for scorch marks in your oven, and has he been taking a lot of baths? Just stop him. We’ll be there soon, B’H. Leave a door open?_

Dean blinked in incomprehension, until he remembered Aaron Bass, the kid with the golem they’d met a few years before. But what would their oven and bathtub have to do with anything? And how would Aaron know if Sam was up to something?

He was tempted to send back “Don’t drunk-text hunters, dude. We’re armed and irritable.” But something in the warning made him shiver, even under his thick blankets. Sam had given up his attempts to contact the Cage, hadn’t he? He’d said he would . . .

_No he **didn’t**. He just did his stupid puppy-face and I figured we’d fight about it later, but then I’d never caught him at it again. And he was so worried about Cas, and started studying with him instead . . ._

He rolled out of bed immediately, and ran down the halls, first to Sam’s room, throwing open the door without knocking, hoping he’d be hearing his little brother cussing him out a few seconds later.

No dice, the room was empty, with the bed neatly made. He did a quick scan, and saw Sam’s duffel still laying on the floor, and his boots sitting beside the door.  
_At least he didn’t go far, without overnight stuff, weapons, or boots. Could he be out for a run? This is early, even for Sam . . ._

“SAM!” he bellowed.

He fled to the kitchen, and pulled the door of the industrial-sized oven open with a clang that echoed through the bunker. He switched on the light and stuck his head inside.  
A fluttering sound behind him heralded Cas’ arrival, and Dean stood, demanding “Do these look like scorch marks to you?” pointing to the metal sides.

Cas didn’t have to sleep, but still changed out of his suit and coat in the evenings, maybe just affecting the habits of the humans he’d observed. His hair was mussed, one of Dean’s Metallica t-shirts hanging a little too loosely off him, and a pair of Stanford-red sweatpants cuffed at the ankles. He looked strangely young in his too-big hand-me-downs, but his eyes were alert and ancient.

“I can’t tell you if this is normal wear for an oven, Dean. Is Sam all right?” 

“I don’t know. Got a weird text. Can you find a golem, if there’s one around? Like, around here?”

“A golem is powered by a holy word, it’s essentially a walking prayer. It’s hard to find prayers that aren’t addressed to me, but I can ask around. Whose is it?”

“Aaron Bass. Find it, bring it, and whoever’s with it. Sam might be in trouble.”

Cas disappeared with a curt nod.

Dean examined what certainly looked like burned-in stripes, and shook his head and slammed the oven door shut. He headed for the garage.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sam brushed the soil off his hands, measuring the distance carefully between the four small holes he’d dug and the ring of holy oil they encircled, hoping the central hole was directly in the middle. He’d had to make his own yardsticks, to measure the proper distance, in cubits and spans, from the center point. Stepping carefully over the oil, he took a knee, and lifted the large, flattish bowl. He murmured a prayer, and slammed it down on his raised patella, and scrambled to catch the five pieces as they fell, without breaking or scratching any.

He spread the pieces between his large hands and examined the ground for any tiny shards, hoping they came from the plain bottom, and didn’t contain any of the special lampblack, saffron, and myrrh ink he’d had to make himself. None of the words had been sundered, none of the characters marred, he was pretty certain.

_Michael, I know we have some history, but please hear my prayer._

Sam carefully placed the circular center piece in the hole at the center of the ritual ground. He rose and turned in a single motion, and took the requisite three steps to clear the holy oil, thanking G-d for his long legs.

He proceeded clockwise, placing each of the four rim pieces into the four holes, covering each carefully and praying over the covered mound before moving to the next.  
_“Adonai, s’fatai tiftach, ufi yagid t’hilatecha.”_ He chanted, concentrating on the unfamiliar “ch” sound, which stuck in his throat as his teeth chattered slightly in the cold.

Once all the shards were buried, he briefly reread the incantation, and attempted to compose his mind, while keeping his eyes barely open to gauge the dim glow rising in the east.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dean peeled out of the bunker garage with a scream of rubber on concrete, growling “I’m sorry, baby, I’ll get you some new tires after I beat the shit out of Sam with what’s left of these ones.”

He sped to the T-intersection which led north and south away from the bunker, and hesitated. None of the other cars had been missing, but Sam’s running shoes had been, and there was no way he could catch up with that giraffe on foot, definitely not when he had a head start. He’d start with Sam’s favorite trails, catching the side roads which followed them away from the country highway, slightly uphill to the levees that surrounded the Solomon River. He’d find the bastard eventually, and could only hope he wasn’t too late.

“Come in, Cas, I’m looking for Sam, out toward the river, up where he likes to run. I pray that you’ll meet me at the levee where we went fishing, if you find the golem. ” He was tempted to add a drawling “Coooome back,” but didn’t want to confuse the angel before he’d had a chance to show him _Cannonball Run_ and the _Smokey_ movies. 

On a hunch, Dean turned up the dirt road which would take him to the highest hill in the area, where Sam, inexplicably, chose to do interval training. He had no idea what an oven, a bathtub, and a pair of sneakers had in common, much less what they had to do with the Cage, but high ground seemed as good a chance as any.

“East bound and down” he half-hummed as he floored the gas and roared up the hill toward the stand of trees near the top.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Castiel stood in a small stretch of desert that was once named Phanuel. The corner of his mouth quirked slightly as he looked at his bare feet, raising his arms out to his sides.  
“Brothers” he called out, his deep voice echoing into the dusty Jordanian afternoon, “Brothers, if you hear me, answer me, in our Father’s name. Your servant seeks to find a golem, a Word which walks and does the work of the righteous.”

He raised his head, and nodded with a smile to a passing tour bus whose Arabic inscription declared it headed to three tombs of the Sahabah located nearby.  
He waited a few minutes, before the sound of flapping feathers indicated an arrival. He turned to see a young woman wearing a conservative black pantsuit and a dark purple hijab, frowning slightly at him.

“Why do you choose this place, Castiel? Is it a challenge?” she asked coolly.

“I wouldn’t want to wrestle you, Ariel. I am not fool enough to challenge the Lion.” 

“But you would have me seek out a clay man? None have ever been made with an angel’s name, only those of our Father. The prayer does not come to the Host.”  
“I seek you as the protector of Israel, as one of your charges is in control of the automaton. Aaron Bass, grandson of Rav Yitzhak ben Berek haLevi of Prague.”

“A line that has seen tragedy. I can find him, but why should I?” Ariel slipped off her ballet flats and slowly began to circle Castiel.

“He may save Sam Winchester, allowing him to stop the _Tohu v’Bohu_.” 

The small woman scoffed. 

“These brothers have shown spirit, but against that ancient force? This is a farce, a ploy to save your favorites. Why should I help you?”

Castiel sighed, and crouched slightly down, raising his arms.

“Very well, then I challenge you. If I can keep my feet for one minute, will you tell me his location?”

Her voice hitched slightly as she retorted “This is foolishness. I will not wager against your feebleness, simply to shame you.” But her eyes gleamed.

“Come on, brother. What have you to lose?” Cas taunted, and shot toward the other angel, grabbing her around her waist and pulling.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sam raised his arms, the scented oils on his hands and in his hair perfuming the chilly dawn with the sweet-spicy-balsam scent of aloeswood, cinnamon, and myrrh. He steeled the muscles in his hands to stop his fingers from trembling, and as the first pale gold glow broke the horizon, he began to intone:

“ _B’shem HaShem,_ Shamash Adonai, G-d of all things, who hung the lights of day and night and named them Sun, Moon, and Star, and by the power of Michael, the Beloved of G-d, the fiery sword of the East and defeater of evil. That you should stand in might and righteousness in support of your servant, Samuel ben John v’Mary. Cause his voice to pierce the false separations of the world of vessels and . . .”

He stopped suddenly, hearing the familiar roaring of a powerful engine fighting its way toward him.

_Only halfway, maybe I can . . . ugh. Lost the Hebrew. Go back . . ._

“ _ha-Qlipppot, ve . . ._ ”

A door slammed behind him, but Sam maintained his focus on the golden light ahead, the scent of the oil, and the Hebrew syllables.

“ _ha-Qlippot, v’baruch . . ._ ”

He felt the hand claw at his right shoulder, but ducked and twisted, bringing his left fist in low, trying to knock the wind out of his brother. His knuckles brushed flannel, but he brought his elbow back and out sharply and felt it connect.

“You sonofabitch, what are you . . . oouufvh” 

Sam stood and raised his hands, hoping desperately for enough time to finish the incantation.

“ _ha-Qlippot, v’baruch . . ._ ”

His knees folded as they were struck from behind, and his eyes, blinded by the bright edge of dawn, saw the frosted ground fly up toward him as he was crushed to the ground, his long hair covering his view until strong fingers grabbed the oiled strands and pulled, folding his neck backwards and strangling his voice.

“Dean, for G-d’s sake, will you let me finish?” he hissed with his little available air “It’s Michael, he’s trying to tell me something, but it’s like Cas trying to talk to you, breaking out windows, without a vessel. Lucifer too, but Michael can translate. It’s Sunday, it’s dawn, it’s the only time, Dean, LET ME UP!” he bucked his hips against his brother’s weight, and twisted and rolled out from under him, raising a palm to push him away.

His brother’s face was as furious as he’d seen it since Dean had seen Rowena working alongside Charlie on the Book of the Damned, another of Sam’s bright ideas. He thrust a forearm toward Sam’s throat, but Sam’s arms were longer, and he blocked it, grabbed, and twisted the wrist out. A grunt was quickly followed by a headbutt, spiky hair flying toward his face and connecting with a snap. Sam saw the red spatter fall on his brother’s face with confusion, and then reality snapped in, the pain welled up, and he realized that Dean had broken his nose.

“Stop, Dean. I’m done.” Sam quickly rolled off his brother and sat up, pinching the bridge of his nose gingerly. The light was golden all around now, the mist burning off in the morning radiance. Sam was bleeding, and wouldn’t stop before the few auspicious minutes had past, taking with them any chance of success. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Castiel coughed and looked up, the sun overhead blocked in a moment by the outline of a woman’s head.

He propped himself up on an elbow, spat the dust from his mouth, and grinned. 

“Best two out of three?”

“Why would I waste another thirty-two point seven oh five seconds?”

“Because I bet you’re bored. Double or nothing.”

He kipped up to standing and pounced.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Dean took in the carefully-laid out ritual, and his brother, shivering barefoot in the December morning, wearing thin cotton pajama pants and a t-shirt, the pristine white smeared with dirt and blood, oil staining a yellowish ring at the back of his neckline.

“So what, this was to contact Michael? ‘Let’s wear Dean to the Prom’ Michael? Who tortured you in Hell?” 

“Yeah, Dean. I figure even ‘Team Apocalypse’ doesn’t want everything taken out by the Darkness. And who the hell am I to ignore G-d, Dean?”

“Oh, that’s rich. After all we’ve been through the past few years, you’ll just trust that whatever happens to fly into your head is from G-d?”

Sam turned and knelt, scraping at the freshly-disturbed earth.

“What happened to no secrets, Sam? What happened to doing it differently?” Dean spat.

Sam didn’t answer, but continued to work his way around, then into the circle, pulling something out of each hole, and dragging his foot through the oil circle.  
A few minutes later, they were silently walking back to the Impala. Dean threw an old T-shirt at Sam over the roof.

“You get that stink on my car, I’ll break your nose again.”

He swung into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut. Sam barely had time to duck in when he accelerated down the hill backward. Sam snorted, and shut his door, wiping his hands and head on the thin jersey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:  
> The geography here is probably completely wrong, but I needed a natural body of water, and the Solomon isn’t far. I stole the hill and trees from NorthernSparrow’s Into the Fire. I’m from the Rockies, where we assume Kansas is more or less a pool table with corn growing out of it, and Google Earth wasn’t very helpful. I apologize to all Kansans(?) if you don’t have levees, or hills, or north-south running country highways near Lebanon.
> 
> Also, the ritual here is drawn from a few real sources, describing amulet-making and ritual-bowl burying as practiced by Jews in the ancient Babylonia, around the time to Talmud was written. Also the excellent “Rav Hisda’s Daughter” historical novels by Maggie Anton, and drawing from some of the blessings and prayers I know from the modern prayerbook used in my synagogue. I am not an expert on Judaism (though I am a practicing Jew), and definitely not an expert on Talmud or ancient Jewish magic. Please do more research than some fanfic if you’re interested.  
> Glossary:  
>  _Adonai s’fatai . . . t’hilatecha_ : from Psalm 51:15, translates to “Adonai, open my lips, that my mouth may declare Your praise”  
>  _Adonai_ : translates roughly to “Lord”, a title/name of G-d  
>  _Sahabah_ : companions, scribes, and family members of the Prophet Muhammad, their grave sites are popular tourist/pilgrimage(?) sites.


	4. Out of My Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the VERY long wait! As you can tell, this will become further and further canon divergent as Season eleven continues. Please comment! And thanks so much for sticking with me!

CHAPTER 4: Out of My Hands

The Impala roared down the small road and into the bunker garage, the brothers maintaining a painful silence. Dean stalked through the twisting passageways, emerging in the war room and glaring up when he heard a noise, drawing his pistol and spinning to aim at the gallery above.

The beard had gotten a bit longer, Dean noticed, though the golem hadn’t changed at all, looking for all the world like a Dick Tracy villain. The hunter relaxed and went to replace the gun, when a movement behind the giant made him pause. A woman, probably about Sam’s age, stepped out to lean over the railing and look down on the rotunda below. She scrutinized the carved sigils in the floor with dark eyes and raised an eyebrow as if impressed. 

Dean looked appreciatively. She had the unusual olive skin/red hair mix that you didn’t see much in Kansas, and was dressed somehow like . . . he couldn’t place it, trying to figure out how to describe a cross between Patti Smith and Stevie Nicks. 

“She with you guys?” he barked.

“Yeah, Dean this is Michal. Did you find Sam, before . . .” Aaron’s voice was drenched with concern.

“He’ll be in in a minute.”

He uncocked the gun and set it on the large central map table, covering the southernmost bit of New Zealand.

“We’re not used to visitors, sorry. Stairs are over there.” 

Dean poured himself a generous glass of whiskey from the side bar, and sat in silence, watching the strange trio descend to the war room floor. They didn’t say anything, just filed down the curving staircase and scattered around the table, the two humans taking seats. The animated clay man remained standing. Dean wondered in passing if he’d break the chairs.

“How did you know, anyway?” Dean grunted toward Aaron.

“Michal’s uncle runs the clay supplier and was surprised by a new customer. She recognized the last name from my stories, and then looked up the shipping address.”

“I know, by name at least, almost every practitioner of bowl rituals in the world. “Winchester” isn’t a common last name in our line of work.”

“And what line of work is that, Mi-hal?” Dean knit his brows and sipped his whiskey.

“I’m a charasheta. The closest translation to English would be ‘sorceress’.”

“So you’re a witch.” He turned the short man across the table, then looked past him to the golem’s blank stare. “Isn’t there something in the Bible about witches? Back me up here, Gumby.”

The golem’s voice was heavy with disapproval as he intoned some Hebrew syllables.

The woman rolled her eyes, then narrowed them at Dean. 

“You ever use a spell on your hunts?”

“Of course, but we don’t splash bodily fluids around everywhere and make pacts with demons.”

“That's not what I’ve heard about you, but that aside,” she barreled past his offended scoff, “I don’t either. A charasheta uses the natural correspondences innate to Creation, and at times calls on angelic aid, while abjuring demons with sigils, seals, and wards.”

Dean slid his attention back to Aaron.

“You vouch for her? We’re not going to find hex bags and DNA all over the place?”

“None but what you bring in yourself.” Aaron smiled, breaking the tension between them. “And I think you can agree on music, at least.”

He waited for the hunter and the sorceress to relax into their chair backs.

“Pour me one, will you, Dean?”

“Get it yourself, and one for the lady, if she doesn’t object to drinking at . . .” he checked his watchless wrist, “Half-hour after sunrise or whatever.”

The door creaked open, as Sam entered, dressed in jeans and a flannel, still toweling his hair. He crossed to Aaron at the side bar and gave him a hug, then nodded awkwardly but respectfully to the Golem, pointedly avoiding Dean’s glare. 

“Hey, Aaron, it’s been forever, but I’m assuming this isn’t a social call, and the JI has something on the Darkness.”

“Hey. I can’t wait to catch up, but thank G-d we got here before you finished that spell, man. Have a seat, I want to introduce you.”

The formalities were repeated, with minimal commentary from Dean about witches, property values, and stain removal products.

“To wrap it all up, they were here to stop you, and to warn me what you were doing. Which, come to think of it, I’m still not sure about. What the hell _were_ you doing, anyway?”

“I told you, Dean. My visions are very clear. I’ve been praying about the Darkness, what we can do to stop Amara. I keep seeing myself in the Cage, with the only two archangels left in existence. The only beings who actually saw the fight with the Darkness the first time around. “

“So you decided to try direct communication with transcendent creatures, with whom you have a combative relationship?” interjected Michal. “Using a magic of which you know nothing?”

“Look, no offence to your process, but the spell was pretty simple, I was just worried about my pronounciation . . .”

“Your _pronounciation_? How did you prepare yourself, to ensure a state of purity suitable for a spell like that? Bury a few dishes? Take a bath and call it a mikvah? Do you know how dangerous that was? How idiotic?”

“Hey, sister, calm down” Dean interrupted, unwilling for anyone else to lecture Sam.

“Yeah, I kashered the oven and stove with a blowtorch and figured an Esther fast would be the best I could do in secret. And my mikvah was the river.” Sam defended himself, leaning his big body forward on his palms, towering over the table. “And what else could I do? Who else can we call to take out G-d’s sister?”

A silence fell across the table for a moment, as Michal appeared slightly mollified, before confusion spread across every non-Winchester face.

“Um, guys?” Aaron’s voice was different than it had been a few years before, slightly lower and with a hint of accent almost. “I’m no theologian, but I’ve had to study a lot to restart up the Judah Initiative. And G-d _doesn’t_ have siblings. Some of the pagan entities do, sure, but the big G? No.”

“Adonai Echad.” The Golem added, flatly.

“It’s the worst Qlippotic blasphemy.” Agreed Michal.

“That’s what Cas says, too, but whatever it is, we have no one else to ask. G-d is gone, of the four archangels, three are dead, and one is locked up with Lucifer, who may or may not be one, but he’s definitely a big gun.” Sam snapped.

“Hang on, three archangels are _dead_?” gaped Michal.

“Yeah. Uriel sided with Lucifer to try to start the Apocalypse, beat the crap out of Cas, and denied G-d, then Anna ran him through with his own blade. We saw the wing-shadows. Gabriel died trying to protect us from Lucifer.”

“And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Angel . . .”

“Raphael” Sam interrupted his brother.

“Yeah, Cas . . . took out Raph during the Leviathan/Purgatory thing.”

The JI looked incredulously at the brothers. Michal broke the silence a few moments later.

“If archangelic intercession isn’t an option, and we have to face the Tohu directly, we’ll have to get creative.”

“What’s Tohu?” asked Dean and Sam in unison.

“Tohu v’bohu is what existed before the act of Creation that started our world, universe, dimension, whatever. It’s not evil, or chaos exactly. It’s essentially cask-strength G-d. Absolute potential and possibility. But absolute everything can’t exist beside things that are discrete, separated things, or they’ll be destroyed.”

“So if G-d is everything, then how is there room for anything else beside G-d? Wouldn’t He just destroy everything by being? Is that why he left?” Sam pulled a yellow legal pad from a nearby shelf, took a seat, and began furiously scribbling.

Aaron broke in, gesturing to Dean. “You know the scene from Raiders? Where they open the Ark? It’s like that. Even Indy and Marion have to close their eyes or be destroyed. It’s not about punishing the evil, exactly, just that humans can’t stand directly interacting with G-d. And the Ark doesn’t contain anything like Tohu v’bohu.”

“Okay.” Dean said, nodding and pursing his lips at the awesomeness of that movie. “So How is there room for anything, then, like Sam asked?”

“G-d had to . . . retract, to allow room for differences and individuals. When everything is G-d and perfectly One, there can be no relationship, no progress, no learning. So G-d broke the vessels containing all the light, and made room to create the world, and us, and . . . everything.”

“And we exist so . . .”

“So we can repair the brokenness, rekindle the light, and love each other.” Michal smiled. “Everything else is window dressing.“ Michal stated simply.

“Okay. Let’s put a pin in what all that means, and get back to this Tohu problem. So Amara is what, rogue G-d Everclear?”

“Nope. Everclear is only 190 proof.”

Sam smirked. 

“But what does she want?” asked the taller hunter.

“Probably to destroy everything and start over in some qlippotic duality system, where there’s such a thing as a G-d’s sister.”

Dean looked at Aaron again. “Clipper?”

“Qlippah. Just think of it like the Dark side of the Force.”

“Cool.”

“Anyway,” said Michal, bringing the table back together “ If you’re right, and the four archangels are out for the count, then we’ll have to go to the Sefirot direct, somehow.I don’t know how to do it without _powerful_ angelic intercession. Archangels would be helpful here. Shame that those other three archangels got lost. I imagine even you boys wouldn’t have taken out all seven.”

“How do you lose an archangel?” scoffed Dean. “Aren’t they, like, Heaven’s Nukes?”

“They can still fall.”

*******************************************  
“You haven’t let yourself go, brother.” Castiel chuckled from his prone position. I’d hoped you were too busy to stay in shape, but . . .” he threw an arm out to grab a stockinged ankle, and winced when a bare heel pinned his wrist to the ground.

“Why do you do this, Shield of G-d? Why do you shield these brothers, in their foolishness and mundanity, and stand against Heaven, again and again?” her voice sounded disappointed, rather than angry, but there was a note of genuine curiosity.

Castiel blinked, forcing his eyes to see the backlit features clearly. Ariel was stoic as ever, but something in her eyes made him wonder . . .

“I thought you would understand. The special connection to a few, out of the many. Humans have apportioned angels to certain groups, even named countries after their perceived patron, even created their own saints to fill the need for Heavenly specialization. You know what it is to seek out a few, and hope they can achieve great things, and in the worst times, help them survive.”

Ariel didn’t reply, and Castiel regained his feet. Ariel knocked him over again with a swift jab to the shoulder, and said quietly.

“Between the forks of the Solomon, in the center of the center of North America. You know the place. Careful, there’s a _charasheta_ there.”

He bowed his head. “Thank you, brother.”

Ariel only whispered “Be careful, little brother. I pray you can guide them as you wish.”

A small cloud of dust and the flapping of wings was all that remained, the patch of desert once again unmarked save for a pair of sensible ballet flats. 

********************************************************************************************

The conversation had begun to break up and get esoteric, with Michal drawing a tree-shaped diagram for Sam and trying to design the blueprints for a very dangerous spell. It sounded to Dean like some sort of Power Rangers thing where they would each act as some sort of conduit and then form some huge fighting team, but humans were never meant to do anything like that.

“Humans can act as vessels for angelic power, but it’s not easy, and can be dangerous. Even more dangerous to be an archangel’s vessel. But the archangels themselves can serve as conduits for these seven lower emanations of G-dly power. So I’m pretty sure this would kill us outright, but we could try . . .”

Aaron and the Golem shouted the idea down, to Dean’s relief, but then Sam started up with his “Let’s ask Michael” idea again. It seemed like Michal could be convinced, but she didn’t know how much it brought back for Sam, how he risked his mind and soul every time he looked back. Dean wouldn't let that happen again. He remembered the broken thing Sam was when his walls broke and all those memories had overcome him.

“No.” he said, a little more loudly than he meant to. “We’re not going to do any of this until we check with Castiel. He’s our only friend in the angel camp, and we’re not messing around with any angel shit until we check with him.”

The Golem growled, sounding like rocks tumbling out of a pickup truck bed.

“Why didn’t you tell us you knew an archangel?”

Michal shook her head. 

“They couldn’t. Cassiel fell during the Generations of Noach.”

A rustle of wings heralded Cas’ arrival, and Dean turned to where he knew the angel would appear – directly beside him. 

“Cas, tell these idiots that you’re not an archangel.”

“I, uh . . .” Castiel seemed at a loss for words, as he walked toward the Golem. The two stared at each other, then spoke in a gravelly, rapid-fire language Dean didn’t recognize. It seemed to start off well enough, but soon Dean could hear the strain in Cas’ voice and see both . . . man-shaped entities tense their shoulders.

“Cas! Don’t be rude. The lady here is Michal, and we’ve mentioned Aaron Bass before, right?”

Cas turned, straightening his tie. “Yes, he was your gay thing.”

Dean thanked G-d there were no crickets in the bunker, then shot a glare meant to freeze whiskey at Sam’s chuckle.

“To answer your question, I am not an archangel. I’m not even in the Cassiel Legion. I serve in the Sariel Legion, one of the many Fifth Day garrisons. I was created after much of the life on Earth, and was not present to be given an entire day to govern and a Sefirah to emanate.”

Dean nodded. “So you knew this Cassiel guy. Kind of a horndog?”

“Actually, I never knew him.”

“But you were created before the dinosaurs. I thought you knew everybody.”

“It’s hard to explain to humans. Yes, I saw humans evolve and got to witness the first prayer. But the Generations of Noah, when so many angels fathered Nephilim, happened sort of before, and sort of at the same time.” He sighed and turned to Dean. “I’m glad I watched so much television the past few weeks. It’s sort of like what’s happening to Dr. Beckett, but I can only describe it as ‘timey-wimey’. Anyway, Cassiel was punished before, after, and while I was created.”

Michal and Aaron seemed to finally recover from his sudden appearance, and both spoke at once.

“Are you really . . .”

“Boker tov . . .”

Cas stood nervously, nodding to each. 

“Sam, we’ll talk later about this morning. In the meantime, it looks like we have research to do.” He grumbled, after scanning the notes scrawled over the legal pad.  
Dan let out a low whistle _Looks like Daddy’s home. And now it’s research time again. Of course._

“I’m going to get started on breakfast. Pancakes okay for everyone? And green smoothies for everyone else?”

“I’ll take care of it.” The Golem grumbled. “If you show me where the blowtorch is.” 

Castiel rose to join the clay man. “I’ll show you what the kitchen has that’s appropriate. . .”

The Men of Letters and the Judah Initiative looked at each other across the table.

“Is anyone else weirded out that the angel and the golem are making breakfast?”

“I’m more worried about the freezer full of breakfast pig.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Glossary:_  
>  _Kasher_ : to make a vessel kosher (suitable) for food preparation/serving.  
>  _Mikvah_ : a ritual bath, used for purification.  
>  _Adonai Echad:_ “The Lord is One”  
>  _Sefirah:_ “emanations”. These will be explained more later. Pl. _Sefirot_


	5. Living Each Day Blind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse my messy chart. Hopefully it'll come in handy. BTW, every Kabbalist has different correspondences for the angels and days of the Week.

Chapter 5: Living Each Day Blind 

The table split itself in half, each side to tackle a separate aspect of the problem of Amara. Michal scrawled a quick copy of the chart she’d made for Sam, and sat beside Dean to explore whether the _sefirot_ would be useful to the fight. Aaron pulled out his tablet, and after Sam quickly set up a secured “guest” login to the bunker’s wifi, and both began the research on _qlippotic_ emanations, and how they could be overcome.

Aaron smiled at the guest password, “M@hT0vu613”.

“You’ve really been doing the research. I didn’t know half on this stuff a year ago, but after trying to get in touch with Grandpa’s connections, I realized I had no cred with these guys except Big Red.”

“How big is the JI these days?”

“Only Michal and I are what you’d call full-time operatives, but we have associates who help us out with specific lores. Fortunately, Michal’s a natural with this stuff. Her dad was very into the mystical side of things.”

Across the table, Michal went over the sefirot with Dean.

“So G-d is here at the top. _Ayn Sof_ means “the endless One”, or infinity, or nothing. That’s the radical oneness we were talking about with the Tohu v’Bohu.”

“Okay, so if G-d is just one, what are all these?”

“Essentially, ten different ways G-d chooses to affect the world or communicate to it. You remain you, whether you choose to speak gently, to send a letter, or to smash a bottle on the bar and call out everyone in the place. But to the people you interact with, who can’t see your soul, the immortal truth that is “Deanness”, you could seem almost like three different people in those moments.”

Dean traced his finger down the chart. 

“Why do these seven lower ones have angels, but the top three don’t?”

The sorceress shook her head. 

“We don’t know. It could be numerological, so there’s one for each of the seven days, or it could be something we can’t fathom. The top three are so innate, so hard to express in a way that you can communicate, maybe they’re rarer, and closer to the Source”

Dean sat back and tried to picture it, even though he knew these things weren’t really easy to visualize.

 _So G-d is sitting here, on some big throne thingy. His crown, his wisdom and his intuition are in his person. But he can show his power, his mercy, his majesty to people through actions. Okay._

“So the angels are the messengers he sends to “emanate” these things to us?”

“More or less. I didn’t realize Heaven was arranged into legions until your friend mentioned that he served in the Sariel one. That’s here.” she pointed.

“ _Tzaddik_ , the Righteous One . . .” Dean could feel his stomach turn at the familiar phrase. 

It had been years ago that he’d first had to deal with being “the Righteous Man”. He hadn’t known that weight was on him until after he’d already failed the test, after he’d started the Apocalypse by breaking under Alastair’s torture. The reason he’d been saved, because once he’d broken that first seal, Zachariah had needed his to be ready to receive Michael for the big showdown on Earth.

He’d wondered, since then, whether the “Righteous Man” title meant anything other than “the guy who broke after just a long enough time before you started turning him into a demon”. After all, it was Zach who kept telling him that he was going to stop the seals from breaking, save everyone, prevent the whole show. What a douche.

“So this doesn’t say “Righteousness”. It says “the Righteous One”. Like a single person. Why?”

“There’s a couple of explanations.” Michal said, warming to the subject.

_G-d, she’s just like Sam when you get him going on one of his pet theories._

“My favorite is that this emanation actually is reflected more in human reaction to G-d’s commandments. Even the name Sariel means “command of G-d”. So The foundation of the relationship of Man to G-d is the commands that come to us. Then our choice, whether to take righteous action or fail to, influences the degree to which we can appreciate number ten, the palpable Presence of G0d.”

“Whoah. You’re using words like “palpable”, and it’s still way too early for that.”

“Okay. Take a break. I’ll look up the Omer concordances, and see if there’s anything there. But if the only archangels left really are locked away in Hell, I’m not sure how we could use these without finding one of the _lamed vav_.”

Dean had already stood and begun to stretch by the time he caught up to what she was saying.

“What the hell is a llama wad?”

She smirked, and wrote two Hebrew letters on the corner of the chart. She then wrote a number below each one. 6 and 3.

“Each letter is also a number, so we use letter names to express a quantity. There are thirty-six hidden _tzaddikim_ , or Righteous men, on earth at any given time. They don’t know who they are, and no one else can be sure of it either. G-d keeps them around as a reminder to himself that he promised not to destroy the world again. When one dies, another is born, or becomes a tzaddik, or something. Maybe we could use one of them in Sariel’s place, but I don’t think just one emanation would do it. Go get me some food, and I’ll check which combination of sefirot might be able to fight . . . I think you called it Amara?”

“Her. I called her Amara.” He muttered, stalking off to the kitchen.

_Thirty-six poor bastards to pick who actually are righteous, and they picked me. The man they knew they could break. The broken son of the man they couldn't._

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The angel and the golem were standing awkwardly in the bunker’s large industrial kitchen, seeming to be single-mindedly focused on their tasks. The big clay man was watching unflipped pancakes slowly bubble, while Cas was repeatedly rinsing and picking at a sheaf of kale, then throwing each leaf into the large blender that Sam had bought. 

“Hey, Cas?” Dean broke the silence, “All the angel names mean something, right? What’s yours?”

“Castiel means Shield of G-d, Dean.”

“Oh. Cool. ‘Cause you’re a fighter.”

The silence swept through the room again, leaving only the sizzle of the hot pan and the hiss of the faucet running over leaves.

“How about you, big guy? You have a name?”

“No. Sometimes Rabbi Bass would call me Adam, because it means red clay.”

“Golems are like angels,” Cas explained, glancing at the golem with what seemed to Dean like a reconciliatory look. “Their name is their identity, their task. Since most are made to protect, the name of their owner is very nearly their name too. I am called by my task, to shield. I had never had a nickname before I met you, however.” 

Dean watched Cas’ face, almost angry with him. He thought they were done with that crap – the notion that Cas was only a soldier, with no free will, no way to make choices, no identity. The angel turned away, his mouth moving from stoic to . . . something else. Maybe a smile? No, Dean must have imagined that.

“What he isn’t telling you,” added the golem, “is why he would have been chosen to retrieve you. Why alone, out of his garrison, he was sent with the legions to Hell.”

 _“Sheket.”_ Cas hissed toward toward the clay man. Dean wondered if it was an insult, because the golem looked offended, then turned to flip the pancakes. _What is going on between these two?_ He wondered whether there was some beef between the angels and the prayers with the chutzpah to walk around.

Dean decided to take the coward’s way out and escape back to confusing but not socially awkward conversation with the not-witch.

“Breakfast soon?” he asked, turning for the door.

The blender answered his question with its loud whir.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sam felt elated, almost like he was back at Stanford. He was taking rapid-fire notes and trying to bridge the gaps of Aaron’s knowledge with the reasoning his pre-law degree had given him.

“So if the strength of judgement, encouraged by the strength of the angels’ desire for judgment above mercy, was what threw the world out of alignment, wouldn’t it be mercy that would fix it?” he stabbed at the chart with his finger. “The male-female axis seems to attempt balance.”

“Sure,” answered Aaron, “But is it human action that must balance angelic action, or an angel? And if if we accept that these four are dead or in prison, and these three lost, then even with strong human action, would that be translated into real balance, without the emanation being guided? Humans can still try to feel the _Shekhinah_ , but without Raguel, we need the added correspondence of Friday to feel that connection. So, Shabbat.”

“You’re not positing a celestial truth behind “TGIF”, are you?” Sam teased.

They interspersed banter with study, and Sam found himself enjoying it incredibly. Hunting always had its academic side, but Dean did it like a penance. Aaron was more like him. They had exchanged a few notes with Michal, but she was now engrossed with drawing a series of interlocking circles, each labeled in Hebrew. Sam could pick up a little, but even a few glances made clear that whatever she was writing was complex and way above his pay grade. 

“So take me back to the _qlippah_ thing. This whole thing is the “Light Side”, but there’s a dark side?”

“Yeah. Hang on.” Aaron leaned over to Sam’s laptop and pulled up a new tab. The screen was filled with a chart which looked remarkably like the Sefirot, but labeled differently.

“Because the world is skewed one way, the _qlippot, or shells, have taken on their own spiritual aspects. They’re emptinesses, though. G-d expressed truth through the _sefirot, but these are the lies we tell ourselves and each other. And this right here might be what upset your angel.”__

__Sam looked at the translations and notes beneath each of the Hebrew names. On the sheet of paper before him, the top was marked “ _Keter_ ”, the crown, which is unity so complete that it becomes nothingness. On the screen, the top read “ _Thamiel_ , the G-d – twins”._ _

__“So these are the shells of the truth, but they now lie?” Sam tried to tie this new information back to his notes._ _

__“Maybe? It all gets pretty iffy in here, even between different kabbalists. We can’t really know. But Thamiel is the artificial and false severing of G-d’s oneness into more than one. It’s the first, simplest heresy. That G-d is not one.”_ _

__“So if somehow some surviving bit of Tohu, with its destructive and creative potential for power, got corrupted by this qlippotic idea of disunity, it would seek to supplant G-d?” Sam attempted, articulating what he could._ _

__“Maybe. Let’s run it by Michal.”_ _

__The three didn’t even notice the pancakes and smoothies on the sideboard until the gravelly voice of the golem announced, simply, “Breakfast.”_ _

__Cas looked over the room, then disappeared.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _

__“Dean, why are you out here? It’s cold, and there are pancakes. I didn’t pour you a smoothie.”_ _

__The leafless trees rustled in a sharp breeze, and Dean huddled closer to the steep hillside which formed one of the bunker’s exterior walls. He had gotten dressed, but his thin jacket couldn’t do much against the wind._ _

__“Thanks, Cas.”_ _

__He sighed._ _

__“You remember when we first met?” he asked, his eyes still glued to the horizon._ _

__“Of course, Dean. That is very recent for me.”_ _

__“In that barn, you were . . .”_ _

__Castiel sat beside him, breaking into his sentence “That wasn’t when we first met.”_ _

Dean thought a moment, then dropped his gaze to the ground. _Of course it wasn’t. Bad enough to have shot him and stabbed him in the chest the first time we met, but Castiel had seen worse. Cas saw me in Hell, Alastair’s faithful student. And then in the barn, the way he looked at me, and said . . ._

__“You still don’t believe you deserved to be saved, do you? After all this time, I couldn’t convince you.”_ _

__Dean didn’t know how to answer._ _

__“Well, I know the whole “Righteous Man stops the Apocalypse” thing was just some bullshit of Zachariah’s to get me all ready to say yes to Michael, but the Mi-Hall in there . . .”_ _

__“It’s ‘Mee-khahl”, Dean.”_ _

__“Whatever. Okay. But she was saying that Sariel, your commander or general or whatever, somehow has some sort of connection to all those secret Righteous people. The thirty-six.” His voice had dropped further, and anyone but an angel would have leaned in to hear._ _

__“Yes. One of my duties was to attend to the guard rotation for the _tzaddikim nistarim_.”_ _

__“Why didn’t Alastair take one of them, instead of me?”_ _

__“I can’t answer that question, Dean. Just know that what had to happen did happen, and we stopped the rest.”_ _

__“Okay.”_ _

__“We stormed Hell, and you were saved. There is no wrong, no regret there. I’m just glad I was allowed to be there.”_ _

__“Don’t yell at me in Hebrew or something, but why _was_ it you, if your garrison wasn’t there?”_ _

__Cas was silent a long time. Dean had what seemed like minutes to regret bringing it up, and had opened his lips to tell him to forget it, when he barely heard Cas whisper:_ _

__“I was the best flyer. The fastest.”_ _

__“Why is that a bad thing?”_ _

__Dean looked up from the ground, and toward his friend, who looked pale, his lips a thin white line._ _

___“Cassiel means ‘Speed of G-d’.”_  
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
Glossary:  
_Mah Tovu_ : From _Ma tovu, ohaleicha Yaakov_ "How lovely are your tents, O Jacob" Numbers 24:5, traditionally sung when entering a synagogue or place pf prayer and study 613: the total number of commandments, or _mitzvot_ (sing. _mitzvah_ ) given by G-d to Man Sheket: modern Hebrew, “silence”  
Lamed vav: 36  
Chutzpah: Moxie, spunk, audacity, isolence 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this is too much of an info-dump. I'm trying to keep it concise, but get you all the information you need. Please leave a comment about anything you like, or anything you're not so crazy about or is unclear. Thanks so much for reading!


	6. Is it Just Me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and the JI figure out a possible weapon against Amara, and Dean and Cas go on a field trip. Also, breakfast!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I have nothing like a regular schedule, but I just got a full-time job! So I'm trying to write as much as possible while I still have time. I have some notes in the glossary at the end.  
> Again, please don't rely on my Hebrew or Jewish scholarship. Some of it is rapid-fire Google searches while writing, some half-remembered stuff from years ago, some is so mangled to fit with show canon as to be actual heresy.  
> (Just like Metatron, I am a blas-hole.)  
> Let me know in comments if I should keep including the Sefirot chart from Chapter 5. I don't know if it's annoying and takes up too much room.

**_Chapter 6: Is It Just Me?_ **

As the three humans in the map room piled plates with pancakes and poured tall glasses of green, they took a brief break from their animated discussion of kabbalistic ephemera.

“So I don’t think we’re going to solve this today, and there’s not a lot of choice in motels around here. And no place you could eat. You’re welcome to stay here until we figure out what to do.” Sam offered. “I mean, it’s a bunker, and we don’t get guests very often, but, you know, you’re welcome.”

Aaron cocked an eyebrow at Michal, who nodded her head half-sideways with a shrug.

“Thanks. We have some more supplies in the car, and some stuff of Michal’s following by courier. We didn’t know what we might find if we didn’t get here in time, so we brought everything.” Aaron admitted.

“Thank G-d you waited until the auspicious time and day, or we wouldn’t have made it. Though a waxing moon would’ve been better.” Michal added, with a wink.

“I couldn’t wait any longer. Plus, I figured I could take advantage of the Season of Miracles, since we’re going to need one”

“At least one.” she smiled and conceded the point.

“No outside windows, so we’ll have to set up the menorah somewhere else.” Aaron noted.

“The fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe said at the front door is acceptable in such cases.” Michal answered through a mouthful of pancake.

Sam turned, astonished. “I know installing curse and blessing bowls is your job, but how do you know all this?”

She swallowed, and took a sip of smoothie. “Did you ever see _the Exorcist_?” 

“I doubt there’s a hunter alive who hasn’t.”

“Move those opening scenes from Iraq to Israel, and you’ve got half of my childhood. When my parents split, my Mom gave up her tenure at Brandeis and went to do field work. Turns out Holy Land archaeology is the gateway drug to hardcore hunting. She rolled around, using IDF surplus weapons and spray paint wards to take out dybbuks and broxa and stuff. My summers and winter breaks were spent with her. My dad was a special lecturer on Talmud and the Zohar, so back home in Chicago, I went to an Orthodox day school and read up to be ready to help my mom.”

“Are your parents still around?” Sam asked gently. _Always a tough question to ask when you’re from a hunting family._

She just shook her head, so Sam changed the subject. Hunters’ etiquette.

He glanced toward the food, and noticed that Dean hadn’t come in to have any. He put a few pancakes between two plates for when he returned. _I should probably talk to him. With everyone suddenly here, he didn’t get much of a chance to yell at me before all the stuff about archangels and qlippot started. And research isn’t his favorite thing. Then again, Cas is missing too. I’ll give them a bit._

They turned back to the matter at hand, and dove back into the research. 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________-

Dean stared into the angel’s blue eyes.

“So, you think you _are_ . . .”

“No.” his voice was gruff and final, but held that same note of pain and doubt that Dean had heard when he was refuting Metatron’s blasphemy. The hunter waited, his eyebrows knit more in concern than confusion.

The wind rustled through the few dead leaves still holding on. Dean looked back toward the horizon.

“Dean, you can’t understand how impossible this is. It . . .”

“You’re talking to Michael’s vessel, brother of Lucifer’s vessel, who both are descended from both Cain _and_ Abel, who have each been to hell and back, and met the actor who plays you once.” Dean snapped.

“Actor?”

“Never mind. How can you be sure you aren’t Cassiel? The name fits, the abilities fit . . .”

“I would _know_ , Dean. I would know if I . . .”

“No, you wouldn’t. If Heaven wanted you not to know, you wouldn’t.”

Silence washed across them again, until Dean looked back at the seated figure beside him. The trenchcoat was wrinkled, and lightly covered with what looked like golden dust. Cas held it tightly wrapped around his hunched figure, as if he felt the cold.

“If you are talking about Naomi, and what Heaven can do to angels . . . I didn’t want to hurt you. I fought it. I fought the order to kill you.”

The sudden change of topic threw Dean for a moment. 

“So you think archangels would be immune to that sort of thing? That all the hardware described on the angel tablet only applies to the rank-and-file?”

He answered, levelly, “I’m not worthy to be the _shadow_ of a fallen archangel.”

“Bullshit. Uriel was an archangel. Racist son of a bitch. Raphael was an archangel. Power-hungry, genocidal son of a bitch. Gabriel was an archangel. Turned out better than some, but still a smarmy son of a bitch, _and_ a murdering trickster for who knows how long. Michael is an archangel. Threatened Sam, and you, and me to try to make me say yes, so he could destroy most of the world in a dick-swinging contest. Lucifer . . . do I need to go on? You’re worth all of them put together, Cas.”

“What have you done? You tried to save the world. Over. And over. Did you fuck it up? Sure. But you don’t have the market cornered on almost destroying the world, Cas. Not by a long shot.” He stopped to catch his breath, shaking with cold and rage.

The angel shook his head. “I can’t explain it to you. I’ll show you.”

He pressed two fingers to Dean’s forehead.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I think I’ve got it!”

Sam glanced across the table toward Michal, whose brown eyes gleamed with triumph.

“Ok, boys, be ready to crown me with laurel and parade me around town.”

“Not sure how that’ll play in rural Kansas. Maybe we should try it out in Topeka first.” Aaron deadpanned.

“This is no time for jokes, Reb Bass. Go on, bat Leah haTzayedeh.” The golem cut in, disapprovingly.

“So we think Amara is a qlippotic emanation of Thamiel, the G-d – twins. Or Tohu, affected by the qlippah, or whatever. Either way, she’s after some sort of destruction.”

“Definitely.” Sam agreed.

“Then we’ve got her.” Michal crowed. “A force of destruction that powerful can only be countered by a force of pure creation of equal strength, right?”

“Sounds good. But apart from G-d, what could that be?”

“The emanation of perfect bonding.” She slid the chart to the center of the table, and pointed at two of the entries. “Every one of the seven lower emanations can interact with every other one. Seven times seven, so there are forty-nine combinations.”

Aaron groaned. “Is this more numerological stuff? I could barely make it through Pi, when the guy got out that drill.”

“Shut up, Aaron.” she answered. “It’s about Counting the Omer.”

“Sorry, you’re losing the gentile now.” Sam cut in.

She spread out her fingers and pushed her palms toward them, as if trying to push the knowledge though the air and into their faces. “Between Passover and Shavuot is a weird semi-festival called Sefirat haOmer- the Counting of the Omer. We count the seven weeks from when the Israelites left Egypt to when they received the Torah at Mt. Sinai.”

“Okay, forty-nine days. Seven times seven. Pairing up sefirot.”

“We remember this literal journey by making a spiritual journey, called Counting the Omer. Each day, we reflect on one of these pairs. Good news is, we don’t need _any_ of the dead or imprisoned archangels. But we do still need two.”

“We have one.” grumbled the Golem. “Whatever his objections, that is Cassiel. A prayer recognizes an angel, and he is powerful.”

Sam grimaced. Cas was not good at taking hard news, especially when it came in direct opposition to his angelic orders or beliefs. And Dean had taken forever to forgive the angel for _being_ an angel, even though that angel had saved him from Hell. He wasn’t sure how long it would take him to accept the idea that his Cas could be an archangel.

He snapped back to attention as the two members of the Judah Initiative continued peppering the golem with questions about his angel-sensing abilities, and whether he had any leads on the other two lost archangels.

“Guys, even if we can talk Cas into it, will we need to somehow . . . restore him to full power? For this Omer-thing? And we still need to find another one. Raguel or Sariel?”

“Yesod, also called Tzaddik, in Chesed, or vice-versa, is what we need. So Sariel. And I believe he’ll need to be pretty amped up to be able to channel a sefirah without grave danger.”

“So we still have work to do. Great job, Michal. I owe you a beer, and we’ll figure out the laurel branches later.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dean felt his stomach land hard in his abdomen, though his feet didn’t so much hit the ground as appear on it. _Never get used to that damn angel teleport._

As he looked at the ground to recenter himself and try not to retch, he suddenly became aware of a noxious smell, and the loud braying of animals. He was surrounded by people, though most were much shorter than either he or Castiel, and no one seemed to be looking at them. Good thing, too – Dean looked around and tried to figure out where he was.

The people were mostly dark, and swathed in many layers of cloth. Everyone had some sort of cloth or hat on their heads, except the children, who ran naked through muddy puddles. The men all had full beards, which seemed to be oiled and braided. They talked loudly, some buying or selling, others gossiping or calling to the children. 

“Where the Hell are we?” he whispered to Cas “And can we leave before they see us?”

“They won’t see, Dean, because we aren’t really here. This is a fixed point in time. I can bring you here to observe it, but we cannot effect what happens here and now, even by our presence.” the angel answered in a normal speaking voice.

He stomped a shoe down hard into a muddy puddle. There was no splash. One of the children seemed to be on a collision course with the angel, but redirected in a wide arc, seemingly oblivious.

“Okay, _when_ the hell are we, Cas?”

“These are the generations of Noah, Noah was a righteous man. He was perfect in his generations; Noah walked with G-d.” 

Dean attempted a chuckle, but it came out more as a strangled, shocked choke.

“We’re in the _Bible_!?”

“This isn’t a scene that made it in, but yes. Genesis Six, verses Nine through Twenty-Two. You can see him over there, haggling with the lumber merchant over the price of gopher wood. Noah may have walked with G-d, but he didn’t get along with his neighbors very well.” 

“Cas, for G-d’s sake, why did you bring me here? To watch a man build a boat? You just felt I needed to see a rainbow? You just can’t get decent olives in the 21st century? I just needed to smell an ancient animal market?” Dean was beginning to hyperventilate, and could feel the edge of hysteria swirling up into his brain. _This is insane. And I’m here, so I must be insane._

“Dean.” 

He felt a hand on either shoulder, slotting directly over where the branded handprints had been, and hold him firmly.

“Dean, you’re not here to see Noah. You’re here to see Cassiel.”

The whirling feeling in his head settled as he strained the muscles in his shoulders against the angel’s strong grip. He took a few breaths, and composed himself to try a shaky smirk.

“So it’s ‘This is Your Life’?”

Cas just glared and dropped Dean’s shoulders.  
“Or is this some weird reverse “It’s a Wonderful Life”, where you’re Jimmy Stewart and I’m the dude with the accent?”

Cas turned on his heel, the trenchcoat flaring out as he spun and strode away. Dean tried to dodge around the multitude of people to catch up. He almost fell over backwards trying to avoid knocking down an attractive young woman with a nose ring and a basket of freshly-baked bread, but at the last minute, she turned to glance at a stall nearby and swung around him like a pretty comet being briefly affected by his gravity, then shooting past into space. He shrugged, and strode after the angel, trusting Time, or Fate, or G-d, or whoever to make sure he didn’t ruin the Biblical timeline. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

“So how does this Tzaddik-Chesed teamup work?” Sam moved his laptop beside Michal, and sat in the empty chair to her right. Living in a bunker meant for fifty or more meant there were always extra chairs around.

“Chesed-Tzaddik is the combination called of ‘bonding in love’, or ‘bonding grown out of love’. I know the whole ‘G-d is love’ thing is cliché, but think more of how G-d created a universe which developed a world we could live in. All the merciful accidents of history that caused this extinction to allow mammals to develop, or caused that meteor shower to swerve a bit right and not wipe out our great ape ancestors.”

She pointed again to the diagram, pointing to number nine. 

“Yesod, or Tzaddik, is also the firm foundation that ties all the sephirot together, but only Mercy, Lovingkindness, is bonding powerful enough to echo G-d's act of bonding that created the world. It also favors Chesed, the natural balance to Gevurah, which can only help against qlippotic "dark side" emanations.”

As she spoke, her fingers traced the lines which ran between Chesed and Tzaddik, and her hands flipped quickly between Chesed and Gevurah. Sam noticed the ancient-looking silver bracelets and rings she wore, flashing as her hands illustrated every other word.

_Concentrate, Sam. You can ask her about the rings, and try to figure out her spicyherbal perfume later, and . . . just stop this apocalypse you started._

He cleared his throat, and nodded, raising his eyebrows. 

“Okay, yeah. So you have the Jewish magic down, and I know our spellbook section pretty well. How about you two try the angelologies to see what happened to Sariel, if maybe he still exists as a lower form of angel, too.” He pointed Aaron and the golem to the “Celestial Codices” shelves, then turned back to Michal.

“We need to figure out how to re-arch Cas.”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

_Glossary:_  
Lubavitcher Rebbe: the head of a school of traditional Jewish thought.  
Talmud: Code of Jewiish Law.  
Zohar: “Radiance.” One of the famous books of Kabbalistic wisdom  
bat Leah haTzayedeh: Daughter of Leah the Huntress

 

Notes:  
On my interpretation of ‘Nephilim’: Most rabbinic authorities hold that the “sons of G-d” who fathered the Nephilim were, in fact, human descendants of Adam and Eve’s third son, Seth. The reading of them as angels is considered heresy in most cases, but since it’s show canon, I left it. Sorry, Rabban Shimon bar Yochai. Bad fangirl spreads heresy. /shame.

‘Season of Miracles’ : This fic takes place (and veers off of canon) just after the events of 11.6 “Our Little World”, which aired November 11, 2015. I gave the boys a few days to get back to Kansas from Massachusetts, and a few more of fruitless research before Sam decided to try to reach out to his dreams. This gives him two and a half weeks or so to research and prepare the ingredients (and himself) for the spell, which had to happen at dawn on a Sunday {Michael = angel of Sunday = Hod = Majesty}. This puts this fic at December 6, 2015 which was the first day of Hanukkah, and a waning crescent moon.

**Author's Note:**

> (Judaism is pretty picky about using the name of the Deity, even in writing, so I use "G-d" in respect. Even though some characters (Dean, especially), will use it in vain, I will always spell it with the dash. I'll also try to put in a glossary of any Hebrew or Aramaic I end up using.)
> 
> Also, apologies to NorthernSparrow (http://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthernSparrow/pseuds/NorthernSparrow) for borrowing Knut Schmidt-Nielsen's The Physiology of Angels.


End file.
